Commonwealth v. Cavanaugh’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 2 district · 79 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 84 later decisions — most recently November 2018 · most notably Commonwealth v. Watkins (1978), Tuitt v. Fair (1987)
3 federal appellate · 2 district · 79 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Chapman v. State of California · Johnson v. Zerbst · Faretta v. California · Gideon v. Wainwright · McMann v. Richardson
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 84 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“On the one hand, [the defendant] could proceed to trial represented by counsel who characterized himself as “unprepared”; on the other, [the defendant] could demonstrate his justifiable concern about that state of affairs only by proceeding to trial pro se. To argue that proceeding to trial, with consulting counsel who felt he was not adequately prepared, amounted to a knowing and intelligent waiver is to suggest that a defendant may only reserve his rights on the issue by refusing to go to trial at all, or by remaining entirely silent throughout the trial.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. People v. Campbell“give due weight to the interest of the judicial system in avoiding delays which would not measurably contribute to the resolution of a particular controversy”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“we are guided by the circumstances present in every case, particularly in the reasons presented to the trial judge at the time the request is denied”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.